. Ultimately the Egyptians, when their insularity
disappeared under the successive dominations of Ethiopia, Assyria and
Persia, described themselves as _rem-n-Kemi_, "men of Egypt." Whence the
population of Egypt as we trace it in prehistoric and historic times
came, is not certain. The early civilization of Egypt shows remarkable
coincidences with that of Babylonia, the language is of a Semitic type,
the religion may well be a compound of a lower African and a higher
Asiatic order of ideas. According to the evidence of the mummies, the
Egyptians were of slender build, with dark hair and of Caucasian type.
Dr Elliott Smith, who has examined thousands of skeletons and mummies of
all periods, finds that the prehistoric population of Upper Egypt, a
branch of the North African-Mediterranean-Arabian race, changed with the
advent of the dynasties to a stronger type, better developed than before
in skull and muscle. This was apparently due to admixture with the Lower
Egyptians, who themselves had been affected by Syrian immigration.
Thereafter little further change is observable, although the rich lands
of Egypt must have attracted foreigners from all parts. The Egyptian
artists of the New Empire assigned distinctive types of feature as well
as of dress to the different races with which they came into contact,
Hittites, Syrians, Libyans, Bedouins, negroes, &c.

The people of Egypt were not naturally fierce or cruel. Intellectually,
too, they were somewhat sluggish, careless and unbusinesslike. In the
mass they were a body of patient labourers, tilling a rich soil, and
hating all foreign lands and ways. The wealth of their country gave
scope for ability within the population and also attracted it from
outside: it enabled the kings to organize great monumental enterprises
as well as to arm irresistible raids upon the inferior tribes around.
Urged on by necessity and opportunity, the Egyptians possessed
sufficient enterprise and originating power to keep ahead of their
neighbours in most departments of civilization, until the more warlike
empires of Assyria and Persia overwhelmed them and the keener intellects
of the Greeks outshone them in almost every department. The debt of
civilization to Egypt as a pioneer must be considerable, above all
perhaps in religious thought. The moral ideals of its nameless teachers
were high from an early date: their conception of an after-life was
exceedingly vivid: the piety of the Egyptians in th